Archive for the ‘Inspiration by Post’ Category

It’s been a long time since I added to my Inspiration by Post project, so please click here if you’re new to my blog and would like a little background information.

Back in October last year I received this lovely postcard from Paula in Belgium. Of course that was just after we’d received dad’s diagnosis, so pretty much everything got shelved without further thought at that point.

I was tidying my studio earlier this week and rediscovered this postcard amidst a pile of other things, and was immediately drawn to the colours. The muted tones of brown, green, yellow and orange are so warm and very autumnal. I wanted to do something with them, and ended up simplifying the palette to three colours and keeping the design incredibly simple. The leather I used is incredibly soft and velvety to the touch, and I didn’t want a complex design to overwhelm the simple tactile feel and the limited choice of colours.

Well, this was a very unusual piece of inspiration! The envelope contained two cords (or dreadlocks) from a komondor – kindly sent to me by some friends who live in the Orkneys and keep two of these amazing dogs.

They gave me the impetus to try felting. I knitted a sheet of fabric using 100% pure wool, and then wet-felted it in the washing machine to produce a sheet of felted fabric. I also braided some cord using the same wool, which was felted at the same time. The result was an incredibly tactile notebook.

As promised I’ve made a second, final, version of this piece. I’ve used a proper canvas this time, and added torn strips of paper to the top and bottom (on which the text is scrawled). I’ve also intensified the colour of the eye to try and make it ‘pop’ a bit more.

EDITED TO ADD:

I seem to have lost the original blog post for this piece. It was inspired by a poem which was sent to me by a lovely woman called Claire:

NORTH OF COVENTRY
A curse be upon you

May you find yourself
trapped
in a Virgin Pendolino toilet –
the ‘unlock’ and ‘alert driver’ buttons
desecrated by my own hands.

May you shudder your way to
Bournemouth
and be assaulted by The South.
We are coming for you, with
southern gags,
correctly punctuated and pronounced.

May your excuses prove obsolete,
and your protests gagged out as
Southern electricity is passed
through your body until you are
electric.

May you awaken and love me.
May you awaken and love me again.

The overwhelming feeling from this was obsessive love… and so I created this piece (which could be hung on a wall, or placed on a shelf – who knows!).

This week’s inspiration was a card sent to me by Rubytuesday of the LLL forum (www.littlelostlushies.co.uk). I loved the colours and shapes, and so I took a jaunt to the art shop to pick up some coloured paper and created a bold, somewhat abstract design.

This week’s envelope contained some origami animals, sent to me by Joan from Switzerland. They inspired me to try something which I saw last year. A book with origami pages, intended to be both useful and beautiful: